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Friday, June 26, 2015

Given today's Supreme Court ruling on marriage, below is an excerpt from Faith Steps, Chapter 14, "Freedom of Faith, Conscience and Speech":

While many followers of Christ draw from Scripture the
concept of marriageas solely between a man and a woman, secular
governments for centuries also have advanced such conjugal marriage because of
its benefitsto children, the economy[1] and
social stability.[2]

Unfortunately, the modern debate over marriageoften has been marked by more passion than
reason, with relationships and reputations suffering as a result. Some who name
the Name of Christ unfortunately have violated the highest tenets of our faith
by showing only disgust and not love for those who practice homosexuality. This
fuels a public misperception that all opponents of same-sexmarriage are hateful bigots.

Other believers do show love toward homosexuals yet remain
unpracticed in presenting rational arguments for a secular audience in the
public square. They feel at a loss to cogently defend what they know is a
cornerstone of biblical teaching–namely, that sexis reserved for the marriageof a man and a woman. So they just accept same-sex
marriage even though it counters what they know true marriage to be.

Believers, however, need not take either a position of
bigotry or of defeatism regarding marriage. We can communicate love and
simultaneously advocate for the truth about marriage.

A public message advocating for conjugal marriagemight sound something like this:

We love and respect those who practice homosexuality and
support policies that protect their dignity and appropriate[3]
equal protection under the law. But marriageremains a consensual, exclusive and lifelong
commitment between one man and one woman, expressed in a physical union
uniquely designed to produce and nurture children.

Removing these objective defining factors makes marriagemeaningless. By uprooting and replacing the
definition of marriage with a subjective notion based on emotional
relationship, divorced from the natural and objective marital elements of
physical union and procreation, no rational parameters remain that would
exclude further redefinitions of "marriage" as between multiple
partners, related persons, or even persons and non-persons.

An affirmation of the exclusivity of marriageas between one man and one woman does not
preclude separate personal, societal or legal sanction of any other consensual
relationship. The core debate hinges not on a moral evaluation of various types
of relationships, but rather on the objective qualities that make marriage,
marriage.

Even those who lovingly and reasonably communicate in public
the rationale for valuing conjugal marriage, however, face an incredibly
harsh and judgmental reaction from activists, the media, politicians and other
segments of society. We technically may still live in a democracy, but the
intolerance of divergent views often seems more akin to a totalitarian state
that systematically erases ideological diversity.

3.Finally, the cultureand the government join to enforce the practice–including punishing
objectors.[4]

With that in mind, consider urging your legislators to protect our First
Amendment freedoms of thought and belief, by quickly passing legislation to
protect conscientious dissenters from discrimination regarding marriage. We
urgently need to pass the federal First
Amendment Defense Act.

[2]
For a thorough discussion of these characteristics, see Sherif Girgis, Ryan T
Anderson and Robert P George, What Is
Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (New York: Encounter Books, 2012).

[3]
The word "appropriate" indicates that equal protection under the law
means that while the law must be applied without unjust bias, that does not
mean that every law must apply to everyone in exactly the same way. A law
pertaining to pregnancy will not apply to everyone because by definition, the
state of pregnancy can only apply to women. A law pertaining to American
citizens, such as the guarantee of a trial by a jury of peers, does not apply
to enemy combatants.

[4]
For example, the women's movement and other cultural forces made abortionacceptable.
The Supreme Courtmade it legal
in its 1973 Roev. Wade decision. The Obamaadministration enforced the practice and punished objectors through federal agency
policies.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Part V in a series of excerpts from my new book, Faith Steps, which encourages and equips people of faith to engage with friends and in the public arena on vital issues. From Chapter Four, A Personal Journey:

The cultural revolution of the 1960's, launched during the tumult
of the Vietnam War and fed by radical ideology and drugs, had shaken the
traditional American foundations of faith, morality and even reality itself. It
hadn't taken much, it seemed, to strip the nation of its religious facade,
revealing superficial beliefs ungrounded in Scripture and a cultural religion
that had drifted far away from the living God.

No one, as far as I could discern, seemed to come even close to offering
any real answers to the meaning of life, the nature of man or the existence of
a Creator.

Haight Ashbury hippies turned out to be better at turning on to
drugs than offering any substantive alternatives to the American capitalism
they simultaneously despised and depended upon. My parents' generation had won
World War II and provided wonderfully for their families, but many couldn't
muster much meaning in life beyond financial security. So their children, wise
to their parents' emptiness and hypocrisy but not to their own, traipsed off
into Zen, LSD and Woodstock.

American political leaders had launched a successful race to the
moon and built an unrivaled economy but then violated the public trust with
moral lapses and bungled burglaries. Mainline religious leaders had long since
lost the biblical moorings for faith and taken to mumbling a social gospel that
eschewed spiritual life for the latest hip political ideology. Educators were
trading traditional scholastic disciplines for subjective, "relevant"
explorations–like the high school course I took on Rock and Roll.

I found the silence of meaning terrifying.

Good News / Strange News

In desperation, I took up reading a paperback copy of Good News
for Modern Man–a loose, modern translation of the New Testament. I would read
passages for a while but could only take so much of what struck me as
bewildering, even bizarre.

I was looking to plant my feet on firm ground, not float off into
spooky spiritualism. Angels and demons, prophecies and parables. That stuff
practically made me shiver.

Yet after a time, for some reason, I would once again delve into
the pages of the Strange Book....

Friday, June 12, 2015

Part IV in a series of excerpts from my new book, Faith Steps, which encourages and equips people of faith to engage with friends and in the public arena on vital issues. From Chapter Three, Faith Steps--Moving Toward God:

Defiance leads to alienation but compliance leads to relationship

The good news is found in a silver lining in the cloud of rejected revelation. Consider carefully this unspoken corollary of the process of revelation and response outlined in Romans:

If we respond to God's revelationthrough nature and conscience by making moral choices aligned with His creationand His law, our thinking begins to align with God's principles and our hearts soften toward Him.

Perhaps a husband resists an adulterous temptation and devotes himself to loving his wife. A woman sacrificially cares for her elderly mother who suffers from Alzheimer's. A teenager makes a culture-challenging personal decision to save sexfor marriage.

Conversely, when we make choices opposed to our Maker's principles, we experience negative results such as failure, loneliness and conflict. We cannot find peace, satisfaction and fulfillment. Adultery shatters marriages and families. Enmity with parents removes the crucial emotional support children need. Teenage sexresults in emotional scars, disease and crisis pregnancies.

Each moral decision we make and action we take–to acknowledge God or not, to choose good or evil–either draws us closer to God or drives us farther from Him.

Faith steps are the moral choices we make and actions we take toward God, as we respond to His revelationand invitation.

A discerning and open individual will perceive readily the difference that moral choices make and the fruit they produce in his or her life. Such experience can begin to train the mind and consciencein the direction of God and His principles, as we learn through experience to choose the path that yields the best result.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Part III in a series of excerpts from my new book, Faith Steps, which encourages and equips people of faith to engage with friends and in the public arena on vital issues.
From Chapter Two, How Worldview Impacts Public Policy:

If someone has deserted the Christian worldview–namely, that God created us
and reveals Himself and His truth through nature and His Word–then that person
is not left with much to go on. If we do not receive truth from God, the only
option remaining is to make up our own
worldview.

If we are each making up our own truth, each arriving at
different conclusions, what do we do when our individually made-up worldviews
conflict?

One of two things can happen: coexistence
or domination.

Conflicting worldviews may coexist in tension for a time,
especially if the holders of the worldvieware willing to compromise with holders of
conflicting worldviews. Key to such coexistence is the assumption, aggressively
enforced if necessary, that all worldviews are equally valid.

After all–the unspoken assumption goes–if we each are making up
our own worldviews, who is anyone to say that their worldviewis superior to another's? On what basis could
anyone possibly make such a claim?

If we claim our worldviewis superior on the basis of logic and reason,
then someone who sees life as random and meaningless will say, "What are
logic and reason but your own vain constructions?"

If we say our worldviewis superior because it is based on respect for
others, then someone will say, "Fine–while you respect others, I will
conquer and subjugate you to my will, for my worldview boils down to this:
survival of the fittest."

Who will referee this dizzying mix of vastly differing
worldviews?

No one. Since there are no objective rules in our self-made
worlds, there can be no referee. How can you referee without a rulebook?

When everyone makes up his or her own worldview, only one alternative
universal ethic remains: autonomy. Literally,
self-law. A society based on autonomy boils down to, "If you let me do my
thing, I will let you do yours." Sound familiar?

Unfortunately for modern America, autonomy–self-rule–is a grossly
ineffective foundation for a society.

The trouble with adopting autonomyas the only guiding "rule" is that
while compromise and avoidance may work for a while, conflicting worldviews
inevitably produce an irreconcilable
conflict. By definition, autonomy is utterly incapable of resolving an
irreconcilable conflict. The rule of autonomy can only avoid judgment; it
cannot make a judgment.